About Us

U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement

In 2005, Mayor Lois Frankel, signed the U. S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement with the long term goal of reducing the City’s carbon footprint by 70% by 2050, as well as targeted goals for the interim years.

Office of Sustainability

The Office of Sustainability was created under the Department of Public Utilities in 2008. Located in City Hall, the Office of Sustainability collaborates with various city agencies, nonprofit organizations, businesses and private citizens among other partners to enhance the viability of West Palm Beach as a modern model of healthy, environmentally progressive and ecologically sustainable, urban living.

The Office of Sustainability aims to maximize the information available to the community through workshops, events and regular updates on our newly constructed website.

City Staff from each department formed a “CityGreen Team”, or Department Liaisons, and work both within their departments as well as with the Office of Sustainability to recognize opportunities to develop, implement and improve sustainability.

The City of West Palm Beach Commission passed a resolution in June 2009 to join the Clean Cities Coalition.

The City of West Palm Beach participated in ICLEI’s Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Cities Pilot Program with 18 other U.S. cities to calculate and publicize their respective greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), including carbon. This information, which will be included in the global database, provides a starting place for the international community to develop strategies that effectively address global warming and climate change. The project also provides resources to municipalities as they develop their own local climate action plans. For more information, please see http://www.icleiusa.org/. The City’s carbon inventory was completed in October 2008 and subsequent target emission reductions have been established.

The Office of Sustainability bases its actions of the Four E’s: Environment, Economics, Equity and Energy.

The Annual e4 Sustainability Summit

On February 25, 2009 the City held its first annual Sustainability Summit to bring in ideas and survey businesses, organizations and citizens in the community. The conference is also know as the “e4 Sustainability Summit.” The e’s represent the environment, economics, energy and equity – four overlapping concepts contributing to our sustainable future. More than 400 people attended this day-long event that began the process of engaging the public in developing a “Green Print” for the City’s comprehensive sustainability strategic plan. Carbon offsets were purchased by the City to mitigate the GHG emissions of the summit.

The Second Annual e4 Summit was held on April 17, 2010. In contrast to the first summit which requested input from the community, this summit was focused on giving back to the community. This was achieved through the wonderful presentations in the morning, various learning programs in the afternoon, and by providing free energy and water conservation kits to attendees through the Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant.

City Green Task Force

The City Green Task Force (CGTF) was created in March 2008. It was comprised of citizen volunteers with the support of City staff. After just over two years of public meetings during which they heard from experts from businesses, nongovernmental organizations and various government agencies, the CGTF produced their report of recommendations to the Mayor on environmental policy issues and programs with the aim of promoting a “greener” City.